Via maura

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/musical/2007/10/22/071022crmu_music_frerejones

- I would imagine there'll be lots of blogtalk about this one. It feels to me like he's fighting old battles, or maybe telling old war stories that aren't quite as tightly relevant to now as they should be. But the point about the shift from imitator to fan seems an interesting one.

Meanwhile there's still a couple of hours to vote in the Pop Open.

Comments

[pot80.livejournal.com]

Well, the thing that makes that piece kinda awful is that Sasha kinda willfully ignores SO MUCH MUSIC in order to make his point, which is basically "I need music to have elements of black culture in order to feel good about it." Which is ridiculous! I mean, is there something intrinsically terrible about music that communicates whiteness? I really don't think that white musicians who are so white that they can't effectively express themselves in the terms of "black music" are racist or flawed, they are just being themselves.

But uh, just in terms of really popular indie-ish music -- what about Spoon, who he's written about twice this year? what about LCD Soundsystem? what about the Rapture? what about Belle & Sebastian and other twee type bands who appropriate a lot of old school R&B elements?

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

Well the argument there would be - and it's an argument that got argued a lot on ILM - that indie-ish bands have shifted from identifying with and imitating contemporary black music to imitating older black music (disco, funk, Motown, old R&B) - Sasha veers toward this a bit by drawing a line at "The Chronic" but doesn't really pursue it.

Even that feels like an old argument though - what disappointed me about the piece is that I hoped he was going to be more specific about what's good and bad about what you might call post-Arcade-Fire indie (for a lot of which rhythm is really vital to get that rolling surging feel) but he doesn't grip on that at all, instead he complains about Wilco winning a poll FIVE YEARS AGO!

[pot80.livejournal.com]

That's such bullshit though! So basically music shouldn't be about the taste and interest and expression of artists, it should be about supporting your sense of triumphalism regarding contemporary black music? Also, wtf @ black music being superior as a matter of fact, that black people are the only people capable of making profound music? That's some serious magical negro bullshit right there.

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

I don't agree with SFJ that "miscegenation" is neccessarily better (or that black music is neccessarily more inventive) - in fact I'm not even sure that he's putting as much weight on "should" as you are. But if a proportion of bohemian white acts in the 60s, 70s and 80s were at ease with incorporating contemporary black influences into their sound, and a lot fewer are now, then what happened? That's an interesting question even if you don't believe that such incorporation would be at all worthwhile!

[carsmilesteve.livejournal.com]

um, what indie-ish bands identified and imitated contemporary black music? i'm honestly drawing a blank...

...and don't say orange juice ;)

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

ORANGE JUICE!!

Talking Heads. A Certain Ratio. Public Image Limited. The Slits. [posts jpeg of Reynolds book cover]

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

Er dude, PWEI is practically hip hop!

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

what Belle & Sebastian appropriate no r&b elements!!!!

[pot80.livejournal.com]

You're totally, totally, totally wrong.

See: "Dirty Dream #2," "Women's Realm," "Funny Little Frog," "If She Wants Me," "Legal Man."


Fun fact: R&B existed before the 90s! Remember Motown and Stax? I think your people called it "Northern Soul."

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

I am not going to see any more B&fuckingS than absolutely necessary!

I've heard of northern soul but it seems so fusty and old and irrelevant to me.

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

There's an article on the grau site today bemoaning the crapness of indie rock '07 as well. I have no patience with either that or this b/c for all that they are RIGHT about indie rock '07 being crap they both act as if indie rock is the centre of popular music, as if its crapness matters at all. yes it's crap, clap clap clap, it's always been crap, DON'T LISTEN TO INDIE ROCK FFS and then you won't have to hear crap music! and if it's so bad why are you taking the time to wring yr hands over it and pen long thinkpieces, why not focus on the tons of great music out there which ISN'T INDIE FUCKING ROCK AAAARGH

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

Yes there's something to be said for this - though the problem is, as we've been discussing with the Radio 1 etc threads, that this stuff (the stuff in the Grau article, not the SFJ piece) isn't "indie" any more, it's mainstream pop or rock or whatever you want to call it.

[pot80.livejournal.com]

Indie rock is certainly the mainstream of music in terms of critical assessment, so it's easy to see how their perspective can get thrown off.

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

Why is this? I don't think there's any issue at play here other than "it really, really shouldn't be, and if it is then critics are divs".

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

What a lot of f4nnydangle! Four pages to say maybe two interesting points? The only sentence to really grab me in the whole of that was the old r0ck1st argument: "musicians retreating inward and settling for the lassitude and monotony that so many indie acts seem to confuse with authenticity and significance." However I think this dude's logic is very flawed if he thinks that the only way indie musicians can progress is to incorporate 'black' musical elements. That seems, if anything, regressive! Surely the next big step is to discover something amazing that can inject new life into all genres (like sampling did for hip-hop) no matter what skin colour of the musican making it. Christ I sound like a big hippy.

[pot80.livejournal.com]

Right.

And what about music made by people who are neither black or white? Do they even count at all?

[blue-russian.livejournal.com]

For what it's worth, I liked the article, although perhaps I should read it again after all the comments - it's easy for (e.g.) lex to say all indie is crap, all guitars are crap, ignore them, but here was at least an attempt to tease out why.

"The blackest man white man in Ladbroke Grove"

[thenipper.livejournal.com]

I had a theory once that it was absolutely essential that Gorillaz were cartoons - because the image of Albarn standing on stage making hip-hop derived music *as himself* would just be too ludicrous. The mask was what made it possible.

Re: "The blackest man white man in Ladbroke Grove"

[pot80.livejournal.com]

You are 100% correct about it, and Albarn was clearly aware of this. There's no way it would've been so successful in the US if everyone had to constantly think about it being the aging, balding guy from Blur, who are basically a one-hit-wonder band in the US.

Re: "The blackest man white man in Ladbroke Grove"

[thenipper.livejournal.com]

Haha - a new genre: after blackface minstrelsy, CARTOONFACE.

Re: "The blackest man white man in Ladbroke Grove"

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

my view on that is that there is a VERY GOOD REASON why it wouldn't have succeeded if it had been old bald dude from Blue + ancient De La Soul - and that the cartoons basically fooled everyone into letting their critical standards slip when really those standards were RIGHT ALL ALONG

ilm thread for the record

[jauntyalan.livejournal.com]

http://www.ilxor.com/ILX/ThreadSelectedControllerServlet?boardid=41&threadid=59843#unread

[umlauts.livejournal.com]

I want those 15 minutes of my life back. I have never read such complete twaddle.

[skyecaptain.livejournal.com]

The uneasy, and sometimes inappropriate, borrowings and imitations that set rock and roll in motion gave popular music a heat and an intensity that can’t be duplicated today, and the loss isn’t just musical; it’s also about risk. Rock and roll was never a synonym for a polite handshake. If you’ve forgotten where the term came from, look it up. There’s a reason the lights were off.

I was up too late trying to articulate a position that a bunch of other people have already expressed. But I will say that the ending still makes me uncomfortable, as it's identifying "black music" as sex-ful ("risky") and "white music" as sexless ("safe"), which seems like a variation on a pretty old (and itself racist) line of reasoning about the "inherent" sexual power of African-derived music. It's (even half-jokingly, sort of a pun on the origins of "rock and roll") suggesting that miscegenation (<--eek) will lead to, um, reflowering in indie rock.

Don't see how Americana (Wilco etc.) or choir/gospel (Sufjan, Arcade Fire) is "out of touch" with "black music," it's just out of touch with what Sasha (and most people, I'd bet) would call "black music." (And I think that even in terms of "contemporary black music," e.g., hip-hop beats are used prominently in plenty of stuff that "codes white" to most people: Caribou, Radiohead, Go! Team, etc.)

Anyway, if there's a racially based "indie rock problem," it's that its audience is almost exclusively white regardless of what it sounds like (as true at a Busdriver show as it is at a Wilco show, if Busdriver's lyrics are any indication). But that isn't the result of bands being influenced by "white music," it has to do with how the community perpetuates itself; it's subject to the same social/economic disparities based on race and class as any other media. If we're just talking about certain aspects of music (syncopation, funk, dub, reggae) then I don't know if I'd bother invoking "white music"/"black music" split, since the argument is 1000x more complicated than that and besides which for any given criteria (arbitrarily chosen) you could find counter-examples.

How long does it take to reflower?

[skyecaptain.livejournal.com]

*I think I meant redeflowering.